Testing Pericles' Claim against Institutional Evidence
A candidate is asked to assess the claim: 'Athenian democracy in the fifth century was radical because every citizen could attend the assembly and hold office.' She has three sources in translation: Thucydides 2.37, Pericles' Funeral Oration; Aristotle, Athenaion Politeia 43–49 on the allotment of offices; and a decree about metics. She notices that Pericles says 'we are called a democracy' and that Aristotle describes sortition. She also knows that women, slaves, and metics were excluded. The question asks her to judge the claim, not merely list exclusions. She has 50 minutes and must use at least two sources. She is unsure whether the exclusions make the claim false or whether that is the wrong test.
1. Formulate a judgement that uses the evidence without collapsing into 'it wasn't democracy because it excluded people'. What distinction should organise the answer?
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The organising distinction is between the inclusiveness of the citizen body and the participatory power inside it. Fifth-century Athens was radical in the second sense: the Assembly was open to adult male citizens, the Council of 500 was chosen by lot, and most offices were allotted, with pay enabling poorer citizens to serve. It was restrictive in the first sense: women, slaves, and metics were excluded, and citizenship was increasingly policed. Pericles' Funeral Oration is ideological, presenting the Athenian self-image, while Aristotle's Athenaion Politeia describes institutions. A good judgement says the claim is true of formal access among citizens but false if 'every person in Athens' is meant. That is not a verbal trick; it is the difference between a citizen democracy and a universal franchise, and it explains both the system's energy and its limits.
2. How would you use Aristotle's account of sortition and the Assembly's powers to test Pericles' claim that poverty is no bar?
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Aristotle's account of sortition supports Pericles' claim in principle: if offices are filled by lot and jurors and councillors are paid, a poor citizen can participate in ways that a property-based system would block. But the test must be specific. Not all offices were allotted: the ten generals were elected, and military command could favour wealth and connections. Attendance at the Assembly was easier for city-dwellers than for farmers from distant demes, even with pay. Pericles says poverty is no bar as a norm, not a statistical description. The evidence therefore partially confirms and partially qualifies the claim: the mechanisms are genuinely participatory, but they do not guarantee equal influence. The answer should distinguish formal eligibility, practical access, and actual influence.
3. A classmate says metics could not participate, so the claim is simply false. Respond.
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The inference is too quick. The claim concerns the citizen body, and metics were by definition non-citizens; their exclusion is a fact about membership, not about the internal distribution of power among members. To call the claim simply false is to apply a modern universal-suffrage standard to a polis that defined itself by descent and cult. A better response asks what kind of democracy the claim describes. If it means 'all residents had political rights,' it is false. If it means 'all citizens had access to decision-making,' it is broadly true, with qualifications about office and influence. The exclusion of metics is still important because it shows that Athenian freedom rested on the labour and taxes of non-citizens, but it does not by itself refute the institutional claim.